Revamp of the Skills System

I've brought this topic up before, but I'm a glutton for punishment

I dislike the current skills system. There are many reasons, but my main grief with it is crossclass skills. I understand why WOTC did it, certain skills (like spot and listen) are innately superior to many others in most campaigns. By making these crossclass skills, you give certain classes an advantage with certain areas.

But in doing so you create an innate problem, a lack of variety. A fighter NEVER has as good a spot as an equal level rogue unless the rogue completely ignores that skill. Nor can a wizard be as good a rider as a paladin. A rogue can never be as knowledgeable as a wizard, even if his background is a researcher.

So my solution to this problem is to eliminate the crossclass system all together. Every skill is a class skill with the exception of the restricted skills, those remain restricted (and a few additional ones may become restricted). While I think for most skills every class should have an equal oppurtunity at taking it, I recognize that there are certain skills that should be kept just for certain class (ie disable device for rogues).

Now the counterbalance to this radical change, is to change the cost of skills themselves. Right now I'm working on a 3 tier system. There are cheap skills, medium, and expensive. Cheap skills are those skills that are not taken that often in the game, or that are easily replaced by magic. Example, climb, jump, and swim. For those skills, one skill point would buy you 2 ranks.

Expensive skills are the extremely useful skills like spot and listen. Those would cost 2 points per rank, or maybe 2 ranks per 3 skills (don't want to get it too complicated). Medium ones are of course those in the middle and cost a one to one ratio.

Notice that while the cost of skills has changed, the number of ranks you can possess has not. So while for a fighter, it would cost him nearly all of his skill points to get spot or listen compared to a rogue, he can maintain an equal footing with the rogue if he choose to do that.

The final change would be to adjust the skill points of each class. Obviously, since a lot of the typical rogue and ranger skills are now more expensive, the rogue and ranger should get more skills. Other skills numbers would have to be playtested

This system presents a few advantages:

1) Every class now has more variety in what they can choose, but specialization can be costly. For example, a fighter can now choose to become a good rider, and would cost him skill points as normal. However, that fighter could also decide he wants to gain perceptions, so he focuses on spot and listen instead. However, since these skills are so expensive, his limited skill points would quickly run out, and he may only be able to afford one rank. Still, if that's what the character wants he can.

On the other hand, a character could gain a lot of milege out of picking up the lesser used skills. Even though climb and jump are quickly replaced by spider climb and fly, they are cheap enough now to pick up- and can come in handy when magic is unavailable.

2) It gives the DM more options. Now, that fighter near the wall, could surprise the party with his expert vision, after all that's all he trains for. The local cleric could become quite a store of knowledges. The evil wizard suddenly jumps on a horse, ducks behind it for cover, and runs past the party whose jaws are on the floor.

3) It makes picking skills easier for classes. For many of us vetereans at the game, we instantly know which skills are class and crossclass for which classes. But for newer players, this can take some getting used to, and can be confusing. But its relatively easy to learn "spot is 2 skill points-always. Climb is 1/2 skill point per rank-always."

I'm thinking of instituting this in my campaign. What do you guys think? IT needs a fair amount of playtesting to get it tweaked properly but I think it could work and work well.

It is interesting, and I like the idea. But it is recomended in the DMG to change the class skills of classes. I've had great sucess with that.

Would you change the number of skill points for the different classes, or would they remain the same?

You might wanna make individual class/skill tables to define what skills are easy, medium and hard for the individual classes. I still think you would need some completely unavailable skills, like Use Magic Device. Otherwise, every fighter is gonna be running around with a healing wand.

Why not allow personalized class-skill lists? For example:

Each skill is given a point rating based on usefulness (must like your expensive, medium, etc. system). NExt, each class gets so many purchase points at first level. THe PC can then choose what their class skills are. THe system that exists is used at leveling up.

THis would work because you can then have a wizard with ride as a class skill, or a fighter who is good at wilderness lore. It balances itself with the intial purchase system, and requires less book work as you only add one new system to the game and the list never changes for a particular PC. You could even use this as the overarching list that doesn't change despite picking up new classes, you just add a few new skills.

It makes sense because the way it is now, why does taking a level in rogue make you better at seeing stuff? Shouldn't your eye-sight be unaffected by class?

I may have explained this poorly so just ask questions if I confused someone.

Actually, I think it is the same thing that we both mean to say

Clay_More said:

Would you change the number of skill points for the different classes, or would they remain the same?

You might wanna make individual class/skill tables to define what skills are easy, medium and hard for the individual classes. I still think you would need some completely unavailable skills, like Use Magic Device. Otherwise, every fighter is gonna be running around with a healing wand.

Click to expand...

As I said Clay More, most of the exclusive skills will remain exclusive, so no fighters with healing wands

And as far as the easy, medium, hard goes- the table is exactly the same for every class...that's the point. Spot costs as much for a fighter as it does a rogue, the difference is teh number of skill points each gets, a fighter might be able to get spot and that's it. The rogue can get spot and lots of other things.

As far as changing the skill points per class, right now I'm estimating it based on what class skills each class has, and what each of those skills will cost under the new system. I hope to be able to structure the skill points, so that every class can get the skills they normally get under the old system, while incorporating the flexibility of the new system.

For example, spot and listen will definately be on the expensive list. That means I will most likely give rogues and rangers a few more skill points, so that they can get spot and listen as they normally do. Classes whose current class skills are pretty much all on the medium table will probably not see a big change in skill points.

This is by far the toughest part of the system, and it will take me a fair amount of work and testing to get it right.

The other tough part is ranking the skills into the three categories. Some of them to me are very easy to rank, like the ones I've mentioned above.

But how about skills like ride....hide....heal? This is what I could use feedback from everyone about, it would go a long ways to helping me with the system.

Ride should not be a hard skill for any class, in my opinion. Gandalf rides after all. And, its not an overly important skill for those people you might consider it inappropriate for, suchs as wizards and sorcerers. They already have pretty many other ways of getting about fast.
Hide should perhaps be hard for the fightering types. Most fighters and paladins aren't exactly considered the hiding type, so if they choose it, they should pay for it.
Heal on the other hand. In my opinion, the fighting types of characters should have access to heal. A modern infantryman today knows a good deal about first aid, even without being a medic. Having a few soldiers in a group who have some ranks in heal would boost the groups survivability. So, make it medium for the fighting types. The only class to which heal seems a bit unreasonable is the rogue.. I dont imagine the groups rogue falling back to heal the wounded fighters and paladins.

Clay-More

Pretty close, but not quite. I mean to build individual lists for each PC, not each class. So, the way I intend it is that two fighters could actually end up with completely different lists of cross-class and class skills. I'd still keep the cross-class system though. It makes sense to me and it is a really good balancing system.

If you look at a rogue, they actually have two benefits under the present skill system. Lots of skill points, and general access to a lot of skills that other classes don't. Under a non-cross-class system, the rogue (and other skill heavy classes) get hurt in the balance issue unless you vastly increase the number of skill points they get per level.

I do like the idea of Stalkers system, I'm just offering a different method of implimentation.

Would you do that list in cooperation with the individual PC or by looking over the PC's character and his story and base it upon this?

If you want a rogue with a background in research, you could always give him a level in expert

I understand what Stalker is going for, but why not leave the cross class system the way it is, but have the max- skill ranks be based on the ranks, not the skill points.

That way you get the Rogue with a background in research. He could have 4 ranks. But it cost him 8 skill points to get there.


I've been playing around with something akin to Sylverflame's idea, instead of having a list of skills for each class, have a list of 'categories'.

Career Skills: Craft, Knowledge, & Profession
Athletics: Climb, Swim, Jump
Stealth: Move Silently & Hide

So... a fighter gets 1 career skill, two athletics, and so on.
The player can then construct a skill list that maintains the general balance of what the class skills are supposed to be, while having some ability to customize.

Instead of writing this all out, I would probably use it as a DM tool to work on negotations with PC's. There's no reason why a PC should have Cross-Class a skill central to their behavior, but have two class skills the character would never put points in.